This year has seen China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi offering support to the expansion of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to Afghanistan, merely days after India slammed a joint Chinese-Pakistani bid to entice third countries to join their ambitious connectivity corridor that runs through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). Wang Yi made the offer to Afghanistan’s Interim Foreign Minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, at a meeting in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Foreign Ministers’ meeting.
According to Pakistan’s Foreign Office, Pakistan and China have agreed to welcome interested third parties to join the multi-billion-dollar CPEC. While Beijing and Islamabad continue to refer to it as an open and inclusive forum for mutually beneficial engagement, New Delhi must evaluate the far-reaching consequences of such a development for not only India, but the whole subcontinent.
CPEC and India’s opposition
The CPEC is a 2013 corridor that connects Pakistan’s Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea with Kashgar in Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR). It is a component of China’s grandiose Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which is usually described as President Xi Jinping’s pet project. This $54 billion infrastructure development project connects China’s Xinjiang area to Pakistan’s Gwadar port, to foster energy, transportation, and industrial cooperation.
New Delhi has been extremely critical of the projects that are...
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